The Bootlegger (Isaac Bell 7)
Page 67
He spotted Inspector Condon directing an army
of plainclothes and uniforms from the front steps of the Morgan Building. Its windows were smashed from basement to attic, its marble walls pocked with shrapnel and blackened by coal dust. The mutilated carcass of a dray horse lay on the curb. Only the animal’s head was intact, blinders covering its eyes.
“Thanks for coming, Isaac,” Condon said gravely. He was a youthful-looking, fresh-faced son and grandson of cops and universally believed to be the department’s fastest-rising star. “I’m awful sorry, but I have to show you something.”
He handed Bell a battered piece of gold.
“Van Dorn shield.”
“I’m afraid so, my friend.”
Senior men carried gold. Bell held it to the light. He could just make out the engraved No. 17 and it shook him to the core.
“Harry Warren.”
“Oh, for God’s sake!” Condon inhaled sharply, blinked, and looked away. ”Always the wrong man . . . Any idea what Harry was doing down here?”
“Last he told me, he was nosing around Warren Street.”
“Of all the ways to go,” said the cop. “Harry busted into more gang dens than you and I could shake a stick at and here he ends up an innocent bystander.”
“Where’s his body?”
“I don’t know that we’ll ever find it. He must have been right next to the damned thing. His badge landed in the Morgan lobby.”
Bell put it in his pocket. “Does the Bomb Squad have any idea what caused it?”
“Not yet. They found a wagon shaft and this horse with its guts blown out. Could have been some damned fool transporting powder. Some people saw a wagon right there where you see all the burn marks. And there are three or four foundation excavations nearby where the contractors would store dynamite. Fire department has the Bureau of Combustibles checking permits. But considering J. P. Morgan was every Bolshevik’s Bogey Man, I will not be surprised to learn it was a bomb.”
“It was a bomb,” said Bell. “It wasn’t an accident.”
He handed Condon the chunk of iron he had picked up.
“Recognize this?”
“Sash cord slug,” said the inspector, naming the counterweight used to open windows. “Could have blown out of one of these buildings.”
“You don’t find sash slugs in modern skyscrapers. Besides, see how it’s burnt? It could have been in the explosion.”
Condon grew red in the face. “If that’s so, then some cold-blooded radical was deliberately trying to kill or maim as many people as possible.”
“If it was,” Bell spoke with cold fury, “then the Red Scare boys deported the wrong radicals.”
Tragically, the foreigners like Johann Kozlov—not to mention Marion’s movie-folk friends—rounded up and deported in the Red Scare were immensely less dangerous than whoever detonated the bomb.
“Innocents,” he told Inspector Condon, “paid the price.”
His angry gaze fixed on the dead horse.
“Dick? Do you mind if I take a shoe?”
• • •
ISAAC BELL brought Harry Warren’s badge back to the office and dictated a directive: “The Van Dorn Agency will establish its own Bomb Investigations Department and contract to provide better information to the government than the Justice Department is getting from its Bureau of Investigation.”
He put Grady Forrer in charge of hiring the best specialists, made a note to ask Joe Van Dorn who his best contact was at Justice, and instructed Darren McKinney to find the sharpest Washington lobbyist that money could buy.
Next, he assembled the Gang Squad. Grieving detectives circled his desk.